Pages

Friday 17 March 2017

Fun with Barclays

I wanted a copy of my credit card statement. Simple, huh?

So I logged on to the Barclaycard Business web site. It asked for my username and password, and three digits of the PIN. I gave them. No joy.

I tried again. No joy.

I tried the previous username and password. No joy.

I asked for a password reminder. It gave me nothing useful.

I asked for a password reset. It asked me things like "name of your first girlfriend" and I gave it the answers which are complete lies because I don't really want it to use the truth (which could be known by other people). No joy.

I tried using  Chrome instead of Firefox. No joy.

After half an hour of trying different things, I gave up and called them on 0800 008 008.
That got me, via an automated menu system, (after some security questions) to ... the wrong department. More security questions, and then I spoke to a person, who was able to tell me that it's another wrong department. And I was transferred again. At last, I was at the right department, and Catherine Lapaz spoke to me.

She explained that they've changed their system, so there's no way it could have worked. Hurrah, the problem wasn't that I'd misrecorded the details. She said they'd told me about this in a letter. Well, they do send me letters, pretty much every month, telling me stuff that I don't think many people care about, and I must have missed it.

So can she get me onto the right system? No. Not till Monday. Sigh.

So why did this obsolete web page still exist, allowing me to try and try and try to log in to it, which could never have worked? Why is that page, a trap for Barclaycard users, still there?

Apparently, only some people have been migrated; the Mastercard people like me. Visa users are still on the old system. Sigh.

So why can't it tell me, as soon as I try to log in, "You're a Mastercard user, you can't use this old system". I had wasted about an hour trying to make something work, that could never have worked.

I've raised an official complaint. And I asked Catherine, "What's my complaint reference number?" So that I can call back about it if necessary.

She couldn't give it to me. She can only raise the complaint after the call is over. It's almost as if she can't use her computer while she's using her phone.

I promise you, the people in charge of these systems have never tried to use them, it's never occurred to them that they ought to test them to see how they appear to their customers, and possibly they don't care.

No comments:

Post a Comment